michaelgiacometticafepoet

on the App

michaelgiacometti — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:44:14 +0000

Varuna – The Writers’ House have embarked on a groundbreaking literature project, bringing short story extracts and new voices to the average punter via their mobile phone app: Varuna’s Writer-A-Day App.

And I’m one of them, reading the opening paragraphs to short story ‘Elijah Upjohn, public hangman’. You can sign up to catch the updates to the App on the Writer-A-Day blog.

Hear here: http://varunathewritershouse.wordpress.com/2012/01/22/writer-a-day-michael-giacometti-reading-from-elijah-upjohn-public-hangman/

a million verdaNT kisses

michaelgiacometti — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 04:58:31 +0000

Nice name for a literary/poetry festival in Darwin, or so I thought. As good as ‘Salt on the tongue’ at the Murray mouth, Goolwa? Anyway, not to be. Look out soon for the official launch of the poetically branded Wordstorm / National Poetry Festival to be held in Darwin, May 10-13 2012.

Humidity

Your fertile breath
covers my skin like a
million verdant kisses

Two escapes to remember

michaelgiacometti — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 05:35:02 +0000

Escape #1: with a dialogue

Is there justice in art? Or is art just an escape from social injustice and harsh realities of life?

Join Harry Who? (escape artist), The Elephant in the Room, and a panel of sock puppets as they inquire and debate this topic in front of a packed artistic audience. Watch This Space. Saturday 19 November. www.wts.org.au

Escape #2: with a book

Escape, a new anthology of short stories by new independant small publisher Spineless Wonders, will be launched in early December. I have one story in it: The Unnameable. A story of a blind translator, a remote Territory town called Kumanjay Creek, and an unnameable curse.

Get your pre-launch copy and save: http://shortaustralianstories.com.au

in Meanjin’s web

michaelgiacometti — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 06:33:01 +0000

Meanjin have been busy in upping their online magazine presence. Stories, poems and essays that appeared in their June print edition are mostly now online, including my short commissioned essay about the literary flavour of Alice Springs: Indigenous cross-cultural collaborative writing.

You can find it on Meanjin’s front page in the Essay section, squeezed between Paul Keating and Simone Ubaldi. http://meanjin.com.au

Or directly here: http://meanjin.com.au/articles/post/two-cultures-can-hold-each-other/

red rum walk bush

michaelgiacometti — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 21:58:49 +0000

We are all walking poets, although many of us do not realise it, prefering concrete paths and treadmills in gyms. Being involved in the Red Room Company’s Clubs & Societies project has engaged my walking poet, with over 20 poems written in a few weeks of walking and observing and writing (from almost 20 years of bushwalking experience).

Here are a few haiku from it. More haiku and poems at: http://clubsandsocieties.org.au/user/54

Scale
Miniature euros
bound pads unmarked on paper
topographies

Sitting in the saddle
This ridge reclines
It climbs and declines
Strata and syncline

Ultra-lightweight gear envy
It weighs as little
as a 10-week prem baby
Where can I get one?

Implied (suggested version)
These lines of contour
suggest landscapes of abstract
possibilities

Orogeny
Crush this mile thick sand
then tilt fuse and fold — it screams
silent syllables

Clubs and Cafes

michaelgiacometti — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 04:26:30 +0000

I have a residency with The Red Room Company’s latest program connecting poets with the masses: Clubs & Societies. It places poets into quirky clubs and societies around the country, observing and imbibing the unique language and culture of the group, and producing poetry from it.

Check out what I’ve been getting up to in my club, the Central Australian Bushwalkers at: http://clubsandsocieties.org.au/user/54

And in the cafe (although the keyboard threatened to type ‘in the cage’), I can be found writing and sipping short macchiato on Tuesdays 1-3pm at Cafe Gonzo, Todd St in Alice. Thanks for the great coffee, Cam.

I will complete my Australian Poetry Cafe Poet residency at Gonzo with a reading of poems created this year about observing this place, wrapping my tongue around a few Arrernte words. Tuesday 1 November, 1pm.

Chapbooks featuring eight of the poems will be for sale for only $5 at the reading.

In the soft light of dawn

michaelgiacometti — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:15:51 +0000

The artist and writer, Rod Moss, winner of this year’s PM Literary Awards Non-Fiction book with The hard light of day, recently leant me a painting of his with which to write a poem. It is one that hasn’t seen the public light ever in Alice Springs and has been, until reclaimed this year, languishing in the back room of a Brisbane gallery for the last ten years.

Read Rod’s book if you haven’t already. It is remarkable.

Anthropology: being themselves (1994) 296cm x 106cm, graphite and acrylic on 300gsm archival board

Here’s a snippet from the work in progress. The painting in part references Tintoretto’s Saint George and the dragon (c1555)

This oblivious
kiss arouses the dragon;
my nature I slay.

Poetry as a tool of change

michaelgiacometti — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 03:30:32 +0000

Kwatye in Arrernte is water in all its forms and sources. In the central deserts it is life and renewal. Here is a poem that was published in the Centralian Advocate last Friday. They got a few of the line breaks wrong so I thought I’d put it out as it should be, in its true Italian sonnet form.

kwatye* (rain) scours the sand

The tired gums collect at river’s elbow
fallen limbs; things we forget or ignore
silt over. The fetid core we bury
deep yet pray for rain’s roar and lhere flow.

Kwatye pours like warm beer, arcs a rainbow
across the amber land. Law serpents draw
forth kwatye rising through topography
falling. Kwatye tows the flotsam ashore.

For a moment the burden lifts to float
on flood; like a car swept up at a ford,
like Atlas freed by Herculean feat.
By an act of grace not made in false hope
when into tjilpi’s palm red sand was poured,
kwatye scours the sand, our sadness replete.

Too much too young

michaelgiacometti — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:19:10 +0000

Aboriginal people in Central Australia die with a frequency and at an age that the far outstrips the whitefella population. This poem is for my ex-neighbour, who in a tragically normal way, died too young.

Kwementyaye* don’t live here anymore

for Kwementyaye Sandy Nappanangka, c1980–2011

She gone

Whispered across the low fence
not looking at me, body turned away

Did I understand right? Who gone where? Casey-Anne?

Wiya, other kungka
last night
hospital

I waved to her yesterday driving around town
oxygen tubes protruding from her nostrils
the dark wagon unmistakeable: painted with desert peas in flower

The cement block of loss drops
I’m so sorry falls from my lips into the scuffed dust

And my hand reaches for the brief caress of palm

The car mourns with family at sorry camp

Her white-ochred body to return to honey ant country
Next door other-side family
rakes the pebbles and dirt into overlapping swirls
scrubs her fingerprints from walls and switches
empties the house of all few possessions
and the overpowering aroma of roast chicken and roo tail
All that has been touched can be touched no more

A couple of ute loads for the tip is all

They leave the house cleaner than it has been in years of tenancy

A vacant possession

Nothing looking for her, nothing calling her name

An empty palm see-sawing over and over

Nampitjinpa and her sisters
inspect the house more thoroughly than the housing commission ever did

Her lingering presence is cleansed with utnerrenge and song, smoked
from every cobwebbed corner,
from every inch of yard

The singers and censer carriers, though still heavy with sorrow
will sleep tonight and dream of digging up honey ants
and offering the delicious dew-drop to their grandkids

Months pass

No sight of family, close or extended

The house remains unoccupied

Mail is returned to sender:

Kwementyaye don’t live here anymore

* Kwementyaye (pronounced koo-man-jay) is an Arrernte word that literally means ‘no name’. When someone dies, out of respect their name is ‘rested’ and cannot be spoken for a time, possibly a year or more. Not speaking the deceased’s name helps to release their spirit from attachments to this earthly place. The person is not referred to at all, or if absolutely necessary, in round-about ways. People, places and objects with the same or similar sounding name as the deceased are referred to as Kwementyaye. So if a lady named Alice died, then Alice Springs would be referred to as Kwementyaye Springs.

Spineless Wonders asks …

michaelgiacometti — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 02:12:40 +0000

When things get crazy, get crazy. Bronwyn Mehan in Darwin has recently started up an independant digital/audio/print publishing apartment (not big enough to be called a house) dealing primarily in short fiction. A short interview with me can be found there, or here: http://shortaustralianstories.com.au/spineless-wonders-asks-michael-giacometti/